How did you balance wanting to get things in and keep intensity while still having your teams stay fresh and enthusiastic as the season dragged on?
Mike Cooper- Ottawa
Things that I think are important as you get to the end of a season:
I think it is important to change things up once in awhile. When you do things a little different it helps refocus your team in practice. I would add some competitive contests that involve skill work but can also be fun. I would also mix up the normal groups.
I think it is important to give the team an extra day off when possible, the later you get in the season the more the body gets beat up and needs rest. It is also good mentally to have a little extra time off. If you don't want to give them a day off, have a film only day which also saves the body. Give the players something to look forward to.
Finally, I would add a couple of special plays, maybe a lob or something fancy. Kids enjoy adding plays that might get a big reaction from the crowd.
As a coach, the later you get in the season make sure you relax and enjoy the moments, the kids will appreciate not being under the microscope 24/7. That doesn't mean not working hard but as a coach your reaction to mistakes should change in a positive manner.
Bob Anderson
I thought this time of year was a good time to shorten practice time a little but not let up on the intensity at all. You want to keep reminding them that the Regional Tourney was coming and nothing was more thrilling than to a player or coach than winning a Regional.
It is also a great time to throw in a few extra shooting drills. Shooting can never be worked on too much. I would throw in some special situations as well. Also if you want to throw a little junk defense at someone, this is a good time to spend some preparation on that as well. You don't just throw that defense in and think it's going to be great, it takes work as well.
The last 3 things I would be concerned with would be ob plays, free throw situations and scouting reports.
Mark Massey- Clinton
In high school volleyball, I don’t think the length of the season ever causes it to become too much of a grind. At least it didn’t for us, I never felt. There’s a natural break toward the end of the summer and so for the most part when kids come back to preseason practice, they’re excited to get back and play.
Our schedule over the years had evolved to the point that I was pretty comfortable with it — usually as soon as we were able to do tournaments, we went for five weekends pretty much in a row with tournaments on Saturday. We might’ve taken one off, which was always welcome. Usually somewhere along the line early October, now I suppose it’s more end of September there is a break with homecoming, which was by definition going to be pretty light.
As we got to points of the season, where we didn’t have a Saturday tournament, we might do things like scrimmage the sophomores, or send some varsity kids to a freshman practice. Just some things to mix it up… my sophomore Coach and assistance were good about coming up with different ideas. A couple of times as coaches we switched teams. Varsity coaches took a sophomore practice. Sophomore coaches took a varsity practice. I think anything you can do that still teaches the skills and the sport is beneficial.
I think it’s pretty standard at the end of the season to not go as long to maybe not do as much of the high intensity stuff, do more walk-through type things geared to upcoming opponents. If we had a critical Conference opponent, and then as we got close to an end of tournaments, we wanted practices to build confidence. We didn’t want to do marathon drills that were designed to cause failure or exhaustion. We wanted teams to leave practice feeling like they were prepared for the next competition.
Some other options for us at the end of the season, we’re perhaps taking the team to a collegiate volleyball match if there was anything that aligned. It was also a good time among the staff and the team to come up with the some team building activities that they had enjoyed in their past experience.
Overall, I would say doing drills that they found enjoyable, and not be as intensive for as long as early in the season. For the most part, the overall length of practice should be short shorter.
Evan Massey- Galesburg
A key is to shorten practice times, but it has to be thought through. By late January, maybe our practice were 1:45 and on a given night I thought it wise to give them a break and surprise them with an 1:15 practice. The players appreciated it and they needed it, but the problem was that from then on it seemed they were hoping for an 1:15 practice. So I shortened the length of weekday practices as the season went on but whatever that time was, I kept it consistent. So if we were going 1:45, we kept going 1:45.
When I put together the practice schedule that I shared with players at the beginning of the season. I would ahead of time build into the schedule some days off- whether weekends or weekday games. I found if I planned them ahead, players could make plans for those days off. And I found that at the beginning of the season I was maybe a little more rationale about taking time off, later in season I was sure we needed to practice.
Great advice I was given by a veteran coach was to NEVER give the team the day off after a big win. His point was that you always wanted them to come back together to share the good feeling. Obviously you have to move on but you want the team together. I would not shorten that “celebration practice” that by surprise, but in the lockeroom after the win I might announce that tomorrow we will be done by 4:15pm. The point is that I wanted to practice the day after games whether we won or lost. I wanted my voice to impact how they interpreted the previous game.
As season went on, we shortened individual drills. The idea was to mentally refresh a concept and then move on. We wanted them to experience success and keep building confidence. By shortening drills, it tended to increase both energy and enthusiasm- we wanted an uptempo practice.
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